Why did Go-Ahead fail in the West Midlands?

[Dutsey]

As the subject says, Why did Go-Ahead fail in the West Midlands?

[PM]

As the subject says, Why did Go-Ahead fail in the West Midlands?

1) Lacklustre livery and branding-they just didn't stand out.

2) Poor attempt at combatting Birmingham with 63/17/87/9/74/97/120 as opposed to Black Country routes with higher use of the travelcard. Don't forget BCC was loss making when acquired as well, it was Pete's short turnaround routes that looked well loaded even if the op by that time looked bad quality.

3) Bad strategy of deliberately losing/ditching tendered work that worked well off the back of Pete's/Diamond routes.

4) Lack of a full time MD, shared with Oxford Bus Co.

5) Too many loss makers, they ran the 97 every 5 minutes I think at one time which was never going to work. They doubled the 56. The strategy just seemed fatally flawed, why target long routes where TWM were already providing a bus every 4/5 mins along the Bristol Road when there are underserved corridors with buses only every 30 mins.

6) To be fair to them, the market was different back in 2006-7. There was already a lot of competition. Eg on Bristol Road, in addition to their 64 and short lived 63, Travel Express, Thandi and First had 4 bph every hour until late and Thandi etc competed with BCC more than Travel for the 50p supplement idea, another poor one. They just didn't stand out and had competition by more smaller operators. They also had fewer unique routes, as Rotala acquired Zak's including Lichfield stuff, First RH and KR, Ludlows and basically took over the A2Z flagship route, 301, when they failed. Small operators might have been able to compete on the BR, though all have now gone, but trying to meet city expectations on routes like that was never going to work.

To their credit, in the 2 and a half years in the WM they merged the two biggest independents and established a smarter brand than Pete's if not than the original BCC livery. They laid the foundations for Rotala to go on, rationalise, improve and ensure that there could be a long term viable alternative to NXWM on selected high use corridors. In short, they were just a bit safe, investment was limited to second hand stuff and the newest buses when Rotala took over were already 5 and a half years old, the Pete's KU52 darts.

GWM should have targeted the Black Country more, tried to acquire unique routes, won tenders to reduce competition, made more of an effort in Redditch and maybe history would have been different for them. I can't help feeling the move into the WM was more driven by the fact they wanted the London Midland rail franchise...